Alexander Payne is riding another wave of enthusiasm right now, in the wake of strong reviews for his latest movie The Descendants. But that doesn't mean he'll be able to make his long-delayed science fiction movie Downsizing, which he put on hold to make The Descendants.

Advertisement

Talking to The Scotsman, Payne says it's really hard to get financing to make a middle-budget film right now, and he hints that he may never be able to line up enough cash to make his effects-heavy science fictional satire. He already has two other movies in the pipeline, a father-son road trip movie called Nebraska and an adaptation of Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Wilson.

That's still going to be a couple years away. I'm so anxious to just shoot movies now, just regular human old films, I want to do about two more before I enter that time suck of pre-visualization and visual effects and all that kind of stuff. I just want to shoot.

So what's Downsizing about? According to reports from a couple years ago, it's about a man (Paul Giamatti) who is financially down on his luck. So he decides to have himself shrunk down to tiny size, to save money — presumably because tiny people take up less space and eat less food? Reese Witherspoon would play Giamatti's wife, who agrees to be shrunk with him but then backs out at the last minute. And Sacha Baron Cohen would play a pair of identical twins, one of whom is pint size and one of whom is normal size. According to reports from 2009, this film would require a lot of CG and fancy special effects, and thus might require more money than Fox Searchlight can manage.

So let's hope that after a couple more acclaimed films, somebody is finally willing to pony up